


Horoscopes For Beginners (Or How The Karmic Aura Can Go Fuck Itself)

by Black_Calliope



Series: Tales of chocolate and pineapples [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M, Pineapples
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-19
Updated: 2011-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:51:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Calliope/pseuds/Black_Calliope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And that was the story of how he got locked in a restroom in the back of a warehouse, held hostage by a herd of pineapples smugglers, whose boss was a seventy nine year old lady.</p><p>Danny will never be able to recover from the shock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Horoscopes For Beginners (Or How The Karmic Aura Can Go Fuck Itself)

**Author's Note:**

> Remember the desperate expression that our Danno pulled out during Pahele (2x11) when he discovered that the truck was full of pineapples? Well, that is where the idea for this fic comes from. :)

“ _Spiritual matters come to the forefront today. You'll want to throw yourself into the study of a spiritual or metaphysical discipline that appeals to you the most. Friends or a group may want to join you_ ,”Danny’s horoscope had said that morning. And really, Danny had almost been tempted into believing it as he’d stretched his legs on the sofa, sipping his coffee. __

_“What you think might be perfect today could have hidden aspects you don't know about.”_

He’d given a long, suspicious stare to the liquid inside his mug. It’d trembled a bit, but hadn’t seemed too affected by Danny’s ‘bad cop here so you better confess now’ stare, so he’d taken another sip and had turned the page, immerging himself in the sport news until Steve had entered the room, dripping ocean water everywhere.

Danny had casted a quick glance to him, taking in the pale morning light that blurred the edges of Steve’s body, little spark of light sliding along the dark lines of his muscles. Steve had smiled and waved and Danny had just shifted his gaze on the coffee table, where he’d placed his cup right before folding the newspaper with the maximum concentration.

After Steve had disappeared upstairs Danny had _not jumped_ , not at all, off the couch, it’d been more like he’d graciously removed himself from the leather surface, climbing the stairs while losing his clothes along the way.

And if he’d joined Steve in the shower, he’d done it just for the sake of water saving, of course.

Now, it wasn’t like he didn’t like horoscopes, more like he’d always been good at ignoring them. They were just something casually placed between the newspaper’s crime and sport sections, and Danny had never felt too guilty when he’d given to a three years old Grace a handful of markers and told her that yes, it was ok to draw suns and trees and every sort of amorphous fairies all over the Gemini and Aries fortune, _just be careful of the Leo, we don’t want to get eaten, do we?_

She’d always giggled and hugged her Simba plush, and Danny had been contented and satisfied with that, thank you very much.

At least until she’d been old enough to read and had decided that the horoscope was _oh, such a wonderful thing!_ and then started predicting the fate to him and Rachel every morning. No matter if he was in the bathroom washing his teeth or half showed under the bed looking for a lost sock, she’d always managed to reach him and declaim how he _might want to express himself through art_ that day or how his _relationships would take on a new karmic aura._

He wasn’t entirely convinced that talking a multiple murderer into being arrested instead of jumping off a balcony could be exactly considered very _karmic_ , but probably it was just a matter of points of view.

So it became kind of a morning habit for them, Danny would run through the house trying to eat his toast while knotting his tie and Gracie would trot along after him, the newspaper half-hiding her and a big smile plastered on her face.

Heart of a dad, someone would’ve called it.

Thing was that even now that he no longer was living with his little girl, Danny still found himself sneaking a glance to the horoscope section, because it was a homely habit and he liked the idea that Grace might be doing the same elsewhere.

If Steve had noticed this fact, he’d been smart enough to keep his mouth shut about the matter.

So, it wasn’t like he didn’t like horoscopes. Not at all. Still, this didn’t mean that right now he’d not like to have at hand the motherfucker who’d written his daily fortune, just so Danny could express his feeling about it, preferably punching them right into the fucker’s mouth.

 _“You'll want to throw yourself into the study of a spiritual or metaphysical discipline that appeals to you the most. Friends or a group may want to join you.”_   
__

Now, Danny wouldn’t have disdained a footnote or a postil specifying that the so called _friends_ might be a gang of crazy smugglers and- “Seriously? Pineapples? Are you fucking kidding me?!” he’d shouted after he’d been handcuffed and brought to the back of a warehouse because, come on, if this didn’t prove how much out of their heads the people on this island were, Danny didn’t know what would.

So, here he was, handcuffed to a pipe in a filthy bathroom, waiting for Steve to do his grand entrance. Because no matter how many the Uzis, no matter how many pineapples – and, really, there were enough of them to be a sort of Danny-sized remake of the plagues of Egypt – sooner or later Steve would come to the rescue and hell would break loose.

And if Danny really believed in all that fate bullshit, he’d bet his _karmic aura_ on the fact that Steve would do something like burst into the warehouse armed with a freaking fork and just take down all the bad guys with some ninja move before they’d be able to say _Aloha_.

Probably Chin and Kono wondered at night why they had been hired, since eight times out of ten all they got to do was sweep away the teeth of the poor bastards that had gotten on Steve’s way. Or between Danny and his malasadas, but that was a whole different matter.

Still, there he was, sitting on a floor that had clearly seen better times.

He’d tried in every way known to man to break the pipe, hoping that it’d been rusted enough to give in under the weight of some well placed kicks, but no matter what, the fucker had vibrated a bit just to deceive Danny, to fill him with false hopes, and then had stayed exactly where it was, right between Danny and his freedom.

Now, wasn’t that a precious example of Hawaiian architecture?

Plus it must’ve been a while since he’d been locked in there in that uncomfortable position, because his ass was starting to become floor-shaped and his shoulders were screaming to him that no, it wasn’t nice of him to treat them like that after a weekend full of passionate, kinky sex. Some consideration, please.

Danny shifted a bit and briefly promised to himself that the first thing he’d make sure to do once he was out of this shithole was to find a chiropractor, marry him and be happy with him like a fucking sparkling rainbow. At least for the three hours sharp that would be necessary to Steve to find them and beat the poor man to a pulp, before lifting Danny on his shoulders and carry him back to his SEAL cave with ocean view.

Because, you know, Neanderthals.

Danny hasn’t yet abandoned the hope that sooner or later everyone on this island will realize what he’d seen clearly that first, unfortunate day. Namely, that Steve ‘oh, wait, I casually got a grenade in my partner’s car’ Mc Garrett is a public danger and needs to be put somewhere isolated, somewhere where all the bad and dangerous things go, things like dinosaurs, philosopher’s stones and pizzas with pineapples as topping.

Sadly he doesn’t think that this is gonna happen soon. Thus in the meantime he’s just settled with the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ philosophy and has been happy that the _rotation of the planets_ \- or his insane partner, as you like – hasn’t gotten him killed yet.

And thing is that this was supposed to be a simple mission, or so Chin had said when he’d texted him the suspect’s address. Danny hadn’t fully believed him until he’d found himself standing in front of a lovely house with a garden full of Plumeria and Orchids.

 _Now what_ , he’d thought while climbing the three steps of the porch, _should I start searching for a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat?_

Frankly, Danny wasn’t a rookie anymore, and in his many years of service he’d seen all kinds of criminals. He’d seen the desperate kind, the ones that found themselves tangled into bad situations and didn’t know how to ask for help, and he’d seen the cruel kind, the kind that didn’t care about other’s people life, about who’s alive and who’s dead because, hey, _business before anything_.

Yes, he’d seen many kinds of criminals, indeed. That’s probably why, when he’d ringed the bell, a hand on the butt of his gun and legs ready to run fast and far if needed, he hadn’t been expecting an old, defenseless lady to open the door.

If he doesn’t recall wrong, things were going just peachy while he’d introduced himself and begged pardon for the trouble, at least until he’d decided to tell her that _you see, madam, I’m supposed to bring you to  headquarters for a few questions.  I promise that it won’t take long._

Oh, Danny knows that Kono won’t leave the matter alone for months, but come on, last time he’d checked, grandmas were still supposed to wear aprons and bake biscuits, not carry a M16 rifle and try to shoot you dead with it.

And neither were they supposed to have a surveillance system that would bring into their house half of the criminal population of the goddamned island, armed to the teeth.

Must have been that Danny was home sick the day the teachers at school had taught teleportation, because when the gunfire had stopped and he’d found himself surrounded by something like twenty gorillas carrying enough heavy artillery to be able to tear down a skyscraper, he hadn’t found a better solution other than drop the gun and put his hands behind his head.

And that was the story of how he got locked in a restroom in the back of a warehouse, held hostage by a herd of pineapples smugglers, whose boss was a seventy nine year old lady.

Danny will never be able to recover from the shock.

He’s right in the middle of commiserating himself – because, come on, _this can’t be his life_ – when an explosion makes the walls of the warehouse shake like leaves.

If he wasn’t restrained as he is, he’d have probably facepalmed, instead he settles on rolling his eyes because, seriously, this is getting old.

Steve should just choose a freaking hobby – not gardening, though, if that’s what it does to old ladies – and quit razing half of the buildings of the area with the poor excuse of fighting the crime.

He’s interrupted in the middle of considering the pros and cons of crochet by the sound of something very heavy colliding with the door of the bathroom. A moment later the handle of the door goes flying through the room and Steve is standing in the doorway, the expression on his face suggesting that he has _a lot_ to say about Danny’s methods when it comes to arrest frail, old ladies.

Danny thinks that whatever this karma thing is, he _loathes it._

“I know, I know,” he precedes Steve, “you can scold me when we get out of here and- is that a _bowling ball_?”

Steve looks taken aback for a second, as if he really doesn’t know how the object has managed to end in his hands, then he just drops it, shattering a good amount of tiles in the process, and opens his mouth, guilt written all over his face and red creeping from under the collar of his shirt.

Danny inhales. Hard. “You know what, forget about it. I choose not to know, for my mental safety.”

And at least Steve has the decency to shut his mouth and keep silent for the fourteen seconds sharp that take him to reach Danny’s side, kneel next to the pipe and unlock the handcuffs. “We were so worried, Danny,” he murmurs as soon as Danny’s hands are free to move.

Danny looks up at him, takes in the frown between Steve’s eyebrows, the hard, set line of his jaw. He recalls the way his eyes looked wild and exposed when he’d broke through the door. _I was so worried_ is what Steve’s body is saying, and Danny wants to punch him for being so stupid and loyal and so _Steve_.

Instead he just replies, “seventy nine year old lady, Steve.” As if that should settle the matter.

The point should be crystal clear even to Steve by now, but the man in front of Danny just keeps frowning at him the same way Danny was used to frown during mathematic lessons at school, and takes out two guns from the back of his trousers, giving one to Danny.

Danny takes it, the cold and heavy weight of the gun finally making him feel balanced again for the first time in _hours_.

They get out of the bathroom and silently take a poorly lit corridor, Steve a few steps ahead with Danny following, both making sure to make as little noise as possible.

“How could you been so careless,” Steve comments between his teeth, as if the brief conversation that they just had in the bathroom had never happened.

“Seventy nine year old lady, Steve,” he replies. And, really, this is starting to get a bit repetitive.

Steve turns to look at him. “I still can’t see your point,” he declares. And of course, _of course_ Danny should’ve known that. Too bad he’d forgotten to retrieve his _Steve-Normal People_ dictionary from the glove box of his car before getting kidnapped.

So Danny pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes, waiting for Steve’s rant to get to a stop. If he’s lucky it’ll happen in time for Christmas. “They could’ve tied your hands and fed you to the caimans and _then_ we’d never found you-” and that’s when Danny puts a hand on Steve’s lips because, hey, caimans? Too much information here.

“Look, just- I promise I’ll be more careful next time, ok?” he cuts short, because today’s been awful enough and he’s starting to get an headache and if they don’t get out of here soon he might start shooting people at random just for his own entertainment.

Steve doesn’t seem very convinced, but probably gets the frustrated note in Danny’s tone, because he just throws him a sided glance and doesn’t replicate.

They proceed for a few feet before the corridor comes to a blind turn. Around the corner Danny can clearly see a large, strongly lighted room. He counts twenty-three people in it, ten of which are armed with rifles and a couple with a gun tucked into the waistband of their trousers.

Everywhere there are piles and piles of boxes full of pineapples, and the unarmed people – all women – seem to be there to check them before closing them with tape and take them to the back of a big truck parked right at the front door.

The old lady that Danny had the luck to meet just a few hours before is sitting on a chair in a corner of the room, talking to a young man and petting what looks like a baby tiger but must be a cat. Danny is impressed by the way the animal manages to stay curled on her lap and look cute at the same time, despite his massive body.

And while a corner of his mind is busy adding ‘they nap happily on old, evil ladies’ laps’ to the list of reasons why Grace shouldn’t get a cat for her birthday, the rest of it registers what Steve is doing. Namely, checking his pockets. Which is always bad news in Dannyland.

“What are you doing?” he mutters, worried. He’s nearly crossing his eyes, trying to keep them on each armed person in the room simultaneously and he doesn’t need to add Steve to the list.

Steve looks a bit too casual when he says “Just checking how many spare magazines I’ve got.”

Danny almost chokes on his own spit. “You _what?!_ ” he hisses. Because he knows what that means – namely, _troubles_ , most likely bullet-shaped – and he doesn’t like it, not even a little bit.

And if his horoscope that morning would’ve said _‘hide under your bed and don’t listen to the voices telling you that outside is safe, they are just trying to trick you’_ Danny would’ve appreciated it a bit more, before laughing it off and forget about it. Which would have led to the present situation anyway.

Because karma is a bitch, and you can’t hide from it.

“There isn’t another way to do this. We need to get out,” Steve hisses back, eyes moving frantically on the room, trying to calculate the fastest way to get out of here.

A sound suspiciously similar to a fire bell starts ringing into Danny’s head. “Oh, yes that there is! We can wait for the back up!”

Steve posture stiffens slightly as he stays silent, eyes fixed in front of him. The sound in Danny’s head reaches the decibels of a rock concert as panic rises into him. “Because you called for backup, right?”

Which is a perfectly sound question, in Danny’s opinion. Because no one could be so stupid to break into a smugglers’ den full of people armed with uzis without any backup, right? Even rookies know that, no matter what, you always make sure to have someone who has your back. So, surely an experienced man like Steve didn’t-

Then Steve sniffs.

Holy mother of God, _he did._

“Uhm, I got lost in the hastiness of the moment?” Steve offers. As if that could explain why they are about to be turned into the human version of _Gruyère cheese._ __

“Now, that is a phrase I’ll make sure to have _engraved on my tombstone, when I’ll get out of here into a body bag,_ ” Danny spits back, angry. There is a limit to the things a man can endure, and now he is feeling the sudden urge to physically assault Steve. And not with a sexual intent, just to be clear.

And Max is so gonna go all ‘nerdy doctor’ on them after they are dead and that _won’t be funny at all_.

But anyhow, that’s how Danny finds himself dashing through the room with Steve at his side and the firm intention of reaching the exit with every piece of his body intact.

They manage to reach a good quarter of the room before the guards have the time to react and start firing at them. Danny just plunges behind a pile of boxes and shoots the nearest man, rending him forever incapable to aim an Uzi at him again.

A few feet away, Steve is doing almost the same, as he takes down three men and shoots another in the leg. The man slumps to the ground but keeps a firm hold on the Uzi, shouting something in what must be one of the local languages.

Steve laughs and shouts back something and even if Danny doesn’t understand it, he sure is able to catch the general meaning.

Now, thing is that when you are trying to escape safely from somewhere and are clearly outnumbered, you don’t go shouting rude things to people. Especially not Uzi-armed people who you’ve just shot in their leg.

So Danny can’t really blame the man as he screams and begins to shoot wildly, emptying an entire magazine in an attempt to hit any part of Steve, but mostly ending to destroy an insane amount of boxes. Pieces of pineapple go flying everywhere, splashing all over Danny’s shirt and tie and _someone is gonna pay for this_ he thinks as he takes down the crazy man before he manages to hit his target by mistake.

 _We have to get out of here now!_ he gestures frantically to Steve as he crawls on the floor, towards the exit.

 _I’ll cover you!_ Steve gestures back. And before Danny is able to blink he’s on his feet shouting “Go! Go! _Go!_ ”and providing enough covering fire for Danny to reach the outside.

He has barely the time to turn around and hide himself behind the truck before he sees a man crawling on the floor behind Steve’s back and _he’s not seen him, he’s gonna take him by surprise_ becomes past as Danny aims and shoots. A heartbeat, the blink of an eye, and the man slumps on the floor with a hole in his forehead. Steve looks at him for a second, stunned, then back to Danny. His eyes big and dark and saying a myriad of things at once.

It’s just a matter of seconds before he is on Danny’s side again, running away from the warehouse on fire. _On fire_ , yes, because Steve has managed to hit a tank of propane on his way out and give birth to a huge _barbecue party_. Isn’t that just wonderful?

Someday, when he actually won’t be busy running for his life like now, he’ll submit Steve to one of those diagnostic test for pyromaniacs, only for the sake of it. Or he might just give him a Rubik’s cube and see how many minutes it takes before Steve starts to take it apart piece by piece, possibly helping himself with a Swiss Army knife.

Danny is pretty sure that it would be like a homemade version of animal planet, just with more action and less little, bouncy things.

The sound of the warehouse crumbling on itself follows them as they make it to the camaro, which is parked two buildings away. And _you see? I did have a plan!_ isn’t exactly what Danny wants to hear right now from Steve. Not when he’s too busy counting his limbs to make sure that everything is still where it ought to be.

So Steve gets on the phone and tells Chin that _yes, I did find the warehouse_ and _yes, Danny is safe_ but sadly _something unexpected came up and now we have no evidences_.

And it’s in times like these that Chin shows that he is a pro – or maybe he’s just resigned to the fact that Steve is, well, _Steve_ – because, instead of panicking and start shouting that that’s a disaster, he just says that he’ll send a squad from the hpd and hangs up.

The silence in the car is almost suffocating now that the adrenaline is starting to lessen, and the stress of the day feels like a heavy blanket placed on Danny’s shoulders. All he wants is a shower and something to eat. Preferably something with a high percent of fat, the kind of dish that would make Steve frown and give him the ‘you are gonna clog your arteries before you’re fifty’ look.

And now that Danny thinks about it, what’s with this annoying habit of people to make prophecies? They should be forbidden or, at least, come with some kind of user’s manuals. Tiny, useful information leaflets that would warn people against the insane amount of ways in which their day could go wrong. Uzis and pineapples included.

Steve starts the car and drives them away from the bright light of the warehouse on fire – which is kind of fascinating, by the way – and Danny relaxes against the passenger’s seat. He can hear the police sirens not too far away from where they are and he’s sure that at the hpd there will be legends about tonight. They’ll call it _the night of the roasted pineapples_ or something more dramatic and will tell stories about how two of the most insane men on the island – yes, _two_ , because by now Danny can be considered insane by _osmosis_ – had managed to beat an old and dangerous net of smugglers and, at the same time, destroy all the evidences.

Agents of the year here, people.

They are speeding up in a half-empty street that Danny doesn’t recognize, and outside the car windows the stars are shining in the darkest sky that he’s ever seen in his life. Fucking Hawaii and their lack of illumination. Would really a bit of visual pollution be _that wrong_?

They stop at a traffic light, and the quiet hum of the engine is so familiar to Danny that, even if everything still smells like pineapples – which is wrong in so many ways he could write a treaty about it –, he starts to relax, at least until Steve turns on the radio.

 _“Libras: your polite ways are making-”_   


Danny fights hard the instinct of shooting the poor object, wrestles it down in a split of a second, before extending his hand and turning it off. He’d almost preferred _Sexy Eyes_ , which says a lot about his current mental state. Not mentioning the fact that now Steve is attentively watching him and- “Would you please keep your eyes on the street? You’re driving,” Danny reminds him, because is perfectly possible that Steve might’ve forgotten to have a steering wheel in his hands. “Plus, from what I can see, you still aren’t Edward Cullen,” he adds.

The use of the name earns him a quizzical look from Steve, mixed with something resembling jealousy. It’s like he’s faxing to Danny a message like _who is this person that can outdo my SEAL’s skills and how do you know him?_

Which is _oh, so great._ Becausenow he is gonna have to explain to Steve who this man is before he goes hunting him down by himself. Not that Danny would normally worry about a fictional character, but he can already visualize the amount of psychologist’s bills that they’ll have to pay to all the people that Steve will threaten before getting the joke.

God, he hates horoscopes. Hates them _so fucking much_.


End file.
